Nintendo Expands Switch Online's Game Boy & GBC Library With Three More Mario Title

Celebrating MAR10 Day!

Nintendo has held a special 'MAR10 Day 2024' broadcast containing all sorts of Mario-related announcements. To go out with a bang it revealed the Game Boy and Game Boy Color libraries for the Switch Online service would be receiving three more games.

The titles joining the service on 12th March 2024 include Dr. Mario (1990/91) for Game Boy as well as the Game Boy Color titles Mario Golf (1999) and Mario Tennis (2000/01). Of course, to play these titles, you will need to have a Nintendo Account and an active Switch Online membership.

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Are you excited about the next batch of games coming to the Switch Online's retro libraries? Let us know.

[source youtu.be]

I can take it or leave it with Dr Mario GB personally but the Camelot Tennis/Golf RPGs getting added is a fantastic surprise; will definitely check them out when I have the time!

also where the hell is Mario Land 1 XD

This is quite possibly the shortest Nintendo Life article I’ve ever read!

But hey, I like how it gets straight to the point.

@Fizza I am wondering just the same... I secretly hoped that it would have been today's surpise.
Nice surprise in any ways!

Happy Mar10 day!

Add support to use the characters in the NSO N64 version, they I will be excited!

@Fizza Mario Land is too powerful to run on the Switch hence why it will need the beefy power of the Switch 2.

I do love a tennis game with RPG elements… This is better than the Switch game, right?

hope they're not planning to charge 50 quid for a Super Mario Land remake.

Does Nintendo have something against Super Mario Land? I know it was a bit of an oddball, but they don't seem to want to re-release it for the world.

Other than that, I see the venerable GB Mario sports RPGs have arrived. Mario x RPG x sports I've heard was a quite popular thing, but I missed the whole boat on that. I'll try to give them a go to see if I can get into them.

Oh come on, why no Super Mario Land 1 already?

I remember haveing Mario Tennis as Kid on the original Game Boy Color and haveing a lot of fun with the game.

@Krull for sure. I didn't play the Golf one, but Tennis was great, both on GBC and GBA.

These are some great additions!

For real, where on earth is Mario Land?

At least the Game Boy Mario Tennis slaps I guess.

@Uncle_Franklin I doubt they'd actually do it given the original game's notoriously short length but if they did decide to give SML1 the remake treatment, I hope they go about it the same way Konami did with Castlevania: The Adventure back on WiiWare: fully redoing a middling-at-best game from the ground up to not only have it play significantly better, but to make it a love-letter to the series it's a part of.

still not sure whether it'd be worth €50 at that point myself but hey it's a thought XD

Now, this, I can appreciate.

Nice picks, though I’m really waiting for the gba ones. Unless they got added and I didn’t know. Lol.

I cant help to wonder.. where is Super mario Land 1?

1. Awesome to see the sports titles! I am grateful that they are adding more titles to the subscription service. 😊

2. We already have Dr. Mario on the NES app, so having the GB one added before other missing titles is a bit odd.

3. Mario Land and Donkey Kong should have been in the first wave of GB titles.

I'll take these, but it seems I'm not alone in wishing for Super Mario Land. XD

@Fizza I would like to see the Tetris & Dr. Mario SNES combo added to NSO. It had a mode that combined playing both games. With the Tetris license, though, it probably won’t happen.

I still own my original copy of Mario Tennis for gameboy color. Phenomenal game, it mixes rpg elements with difficult tennis battles that definitely require strategy.

Can’t wait to replay again on the 12th!

I just bought used copies of Mario Tennis and Golf for GameBoy mere days ago. Go figure…

These sound like good additions but I have to join those grumbling that Mario Land should have been added. It was his first Game Boy adventure!

SML wasn’t the prettiest game, I remember, but it still has historic value and I’d love to try it again after all these years.

+1 for SML..... It needs to be there.

2 of my favorite Gameboy games...

The fact that Super Mario Land is still not here makes me wonder if there's some licensing issue with it. Maybe with the Can Can music? That's all I can think of. There's no reason why it wouldn't be here already.

Then again we also have Wario Land 3 and not 1 and 2, right? Feels like they're trolling at this point lol.

@Yosher isn't the Can Can public domain?

@batmanbud2 Probably, but it's the best reason I could think of other than them saying 'hey, wouldn't it be funny if we put Mario Land 2 and leave Mario Land 1 MIA for a long time'. lol

Super Mario Land is an odd omission. Perhaps even with its early-portable gaming charm, Nintendo just sees absolutely no value in it.
There's nothing tricky about it technically or licensing-wise so really there's nothing stopping it from being on there except from Nintendo actually wanting to promote it!

I haven't played the first Super Mario Land since 1991 or so, but IIRC it wasn't particularly good? SML 2 was a huge step upwards in quality. Though Nintendo has put many worse games in the NSO library, so I guess that wouldn't stop them from including it.

GB Dr. Mario is just fine, but Mario Golf and Tennis are big additions to NSO, if you've never played them I can't recommend them enough - if you've played Golf Story it's practically that since it's a spiritual successor to them -, looking forward to replaying Tennis and play Golf properly for the first time (have played it before, but barely so since I didn't actually have it, only on emulator) when I have the time for them!
Since so many mentioned it, it's weird they haven't added the first Super Mario Land yet, but it will eventually come for sure and personally I'll gladly take the GBC Mario Sports games over it.

@AG_Awesome Nope, but now that these are on NSO I expect the GBA ones to eventually come since they're their sequels!
@RadioShadow I'm excited regardless but yeah, Transfer Pak compatibility would be one of the things that could really make NSO stand out compared to Virtual Console!
@Polvasti It had its own charm, but I'd definitely say the second one is better, not to mention that the first one is really short.

Someone at Nintendo really hates Mario Land 1.

Don't wanna pay for Expansion Pack? Black and white Dr. Mario. What a bizarre release choice.

I am confident Super Mario Land 1 and Wario Land (SML3) will be added eventually, but it is unfortunate that they have not been added already. The 2 sports added in this update are good ones though apparently.

Downloaded Mario Tennis on my 3ds, had a lot of fun with it! It's great! 🤎

Huh. I never play the GBC Mario sports games because... well I wasn’t born yet at the time. Although I did play the GBA Mario Tennis game and that was honestly really good and really underrated so the fact that they are releasing these games on NSO is really great (seriously Nintendo bring back the human characters already!). Also you all are not the only ones confused about the first Super Mario land game not being on NSO.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again- thanks for nothing, Nintendo

A couple of decent Mario titles, the only downside is that you have to wait until after Mario Daybto play them. Also, would have loved to of seen Super Mario Land 1 added, but hopefully they're saving that for a later release date.

What is with this game selection and where are Bionic Battler, Aerostar and Fish Dude at? Nintendo needs to get on that!

@Polvasti For a launch game (and one made with only a 32KB ROM budget, which even for 1989 was miniscule), it was enjoyable. Short but that made it good for an occasional quick replay.

@KingMike Those aren’t Mario games so are excluded from MAR10 celebrations.

@Fizza All I remember about Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth is that it tried to blow out my eardrums with an aggressively loud OST.

And there’s still no Super Mario Land 1?

Well, at least I don’t think I’ve played Mario Golf and Mario Tennis on Game Boy. Might be worth a look.

For a 3 minute set of announcements, I'm very happy for everything that was revealed. Good news, brief, & straight to the point. However Nintendo has almost played their last shown cards, there's nothing else they have on the table except Metroid Prime 4 & Pokemon ZA (& Silksong?). This is starting to look very familiar to mid 2016 when Nintendo had Zelda BOTW & Pokemon Sun/Moon as their only first party lineup for the foreseeable future, and that was proceeded by a host of Mario spinoff titles like Luigi's Mansion 1 remake and RPG Mario & Luigi SuperStar Saga remake. I'm sensing a pattern here

Mario Land 1 ? This is my go-to on GB physical. Would be awesome to use the save state feature for quick play sessions.

@HammerKirby Miyamoto San, Don't know if he hates it or not, but I do know that he didn't have anything to do with the creation of it, so it may be way down on his list. To me it's one of my favorite Mario games and also has some of the best Mario music.

Thank you Nintendo!❤️

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